


Challenge

by copperbadge



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, House M.D.
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-06
Updated: 2006-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House has a weird coma case on his desk and a crazy guy in his clinic rounds. Also fantasies of a remote mute button for Foreman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Challenge

"Coma," House said, looking less than thrilled. "That should make the differential easy. Look, he's unconscious! Must be a coma."

"It's probably due to some head trauma -- he was in pretty bad shape when they brought him in," Cameron suggested. 

"Coma," House repeated, more to himself than to them. "Means he can't lie. Except by omission, but he's omitting it all...almost the same thing."

"No it's not," Foreman said.

"Do I pay you to talk?" House replied, tapping the whiteboard marker against his lips. "No history, either. Symptoms are...coma..."

He glanced at the others and made an impatient prompting gesture. 

"Some throat and lung trauma, probably chronic cough," Cameron said. "No signs he's a smoker, though. What looks like infected bite and scratch wounds and a _lot_ of scarring. Admitted with a hundred degree fever which is holding steady."

"Sounds like the flu," Chase scoffed. 

"Screens are all clean," Cameron said with a shrug. "No common viruses or bacterial infections."

"You said scars," House prompted. 

"All over his body, mainly on his legs and ribcage, along the spine, hands, arms, neck. They all look like clawmarks."

"Dog handler," Foreman suggested.

"Big clawmarks," Cameron clarified.

"Big like Great Dane or big like Grizzly Bear?" Chase asked.

"Big like circus animal handler."

"You think he ran away from the circus?" 

"It's a working hypothesis," House said. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Chase asked, as they followed him out into the hallway.

"To see the patient. You can't diagnose a patient if you don't look at them, right?" House asked. Cameron rolled her eyes behind his back. "Saw that."

"You're only going to see him because he's comatose," she said defensively.

"And...?"

Cameron made a frustrated noise, but she followed. 

***

The man lying in the hospital bed was prematurely grey, but unconscious his face was relaxed. Awake, he might look fortyish, perhaps even older. Ironically, the coma was doing him a favour, and he looked barely thirty-five. 

"Do we have _any_ information on him?" House said, lifting up the sheets with his cane. 

"Ummm...the police are running his fingerprints. He didn't have any identification on him. Just a..." Cameron's brow furrowed as she read his chart.

"He was admitted with a dramatic pause?"

"A stick," she said. "Polished thirteen-inch wooden stick, like some kind of pointer, it says."

House whistled low and shoved the sheet back. The jagged scars started at the man's throat and criscrossed his torso and arms down to his elbows. 

"Adrenaline junkie?" Chase offered.

"Bear baiter," House replied. "Or..."

He lifted the sheet further. On the man's right thigh, just below his hip, was a nasty-looking bite scar, long since healed. House held up his hand, fingers curled against palm except for this thumb and little finger, and compared the span to the bite. The tips of his fingers fitted into either end of the bite. 

"This is weird," Cameron said suddenly.

"It wasn't before?" Foreman asked.

"The notes say he was found in a farmyard wearing nothing but his pants."

"Ah, youth," House sighed. "Get him a full course of tetanus and rabies -- yes, I _know_ they already did that, do it again -- and screen for animal-borne viruses. MRI, and get someone to figure out what caused _that_ ," he added, pointing to the bite. 

"Where are you going?" 

House stopped in the doorway and turned, giving Cameron a mock-puzzled look.

"To wait for you to start doing what I told you?"

***

Cuddy eventually found him hiding behind his desk and routed him out, all but frogwalking him down to the clinic while he complained about the proletariat and informed passing orderlies that she was taking him to have sex in a supply closet. 

"It's the cane," he said to the clinic desk nurse, who was used to him by now and handed him a sucker with his first file. "She can't get enough."

"Exam room three. You'll like him," the nurse replied. 

"If this is vaginitis again -- "

"Dementia." She winked at him. He wrinkled his nose and ambled off to his first victi -- patient. 

The man was pacing the room, arms crossed, looking very impatient. He might have been a priest, or some kind of cultist at any rate -- long black robe, unwashed hair, faint smell of chemicals. He stopped when House entered and pointed at him.

"You have a werewolf in your hospital," he said.

"Oh, great," House sighed. 

"I have told your -- your dok-torrs that I must see your patient list at once and they have been extremely imbecilic," the man continued. 

"How long have you been hallucinating about werewolves?"

"Idiot! Are all you Muggles alike?" the man snarled. 

"Do you ever have disturbing dreams?" House asked, bored.

"You must assist me in finding him. I know he was brought here, though I do not know where."

"Do you find yourself fascinated by repetitive activities?"

"If I could have just a -- what?" the man asked, stopping his pacing. House sighed again.

"I'm giving you the mental health evaluation survey. You don't have to actually answer, I'm going to declare you paranoid schizophrenic anyway," House replied. "Go on, keep ranting, I'll just keep asking."

"I am not a madman, you stupid Muggle. I am in search of a -- a colleague who was brought here," the man snarled. 

"Mmmhm. Have you ever harmed a small animal?"

"You are pointless. I should have done this from the first," the man said, and grabbed him by the throat, pushing him against the wall. He was weirdly strong. "My name is Severus Snape. I am a wizard and a legilimens. This may hurt."

Fire raced through his veins and his leg throbbed with phantom pain; the world went vaguely white around the edges and his own memory unspooled before him like a film; in particular, the diagnosis that afternoon. Also several of his milder fantasies about Chase and Cameron and the one about being able to remotely mute Foreman any time he liked.

He brought the cane up and cracked the man in the side of the head with it, but not before his legs began to fold under him. They both ended up on the floor, staring at each other. 

"Take me to your patient," Mr. Snape said, breathing hard.

"Beam me up, Scotty," House retorted. 

"Now, you fool. The grey-haired one you think has tetanic paralysis," the man retorted. House stared at him.

"What the hell _are_ you?" he asked, scrambling to get upright. It was a long process, from the floor. The other man rose in a single graceful motion and offered him a hand up. House took it, pulled himself upright, and then turned the man's hand over, holding it up.

"Meth cook?" he asked.

"Potions Master," Snape replied grimly. "I have a cure for your patient."

"I think that's what they call indulging a psychotic."

They regarded each other warily, and finally House reached behind him and opened the door. "Come on. This should be fun."

***

The look on Cameron's face when he walked into the hospital room followed by a tall man dressed in black robes was totally worth being mind-melded by a crazy man.

"Who's he?" Chase asked, as Snape shoved Cameron out of the way and bent over Coma Man's pillow, examining his face and taking his pulse.

"Crazy guy," House replied. "Picked him up in Clinic Hours."

The other three exchanged looks. House grinned, but his eyes were on Snape, who was taking a vial of clear liquid out of his pocket, and a stick out of his other pocket.

House didn't look away when someone crashed something outside the hospital room, though the other three did; he saw Snape slip the entire contents of the vial into the man's mouth and then quickly shove the vial under his pillow. By the time the ducklings looked back, the whole operation had been accomplished with remarkable dexterity and the stick was nowhere in sight. 

Right on cue, Coma Man began to cough and open his eyes. After a flurry of activity from the others, he was helped into a sitting position and allowed to vomit into a hastily procured bedpan. There were feathers in the puke. 

"What did you do to him?" Foreman asked Snape. 

"Why, do you know any other wer -- "

"He's my," gasped the other man, "He's my -- hrk -- personal physician."

Snape looked put out at not being able to widely announce his pet theory -- HA **PET** THEORY! -- about werewolves. 

Cameron put a caring, sensitive, incredibly annoying hand on the man's shoulder. He glanced up at her. It was love at first crippling-disease.

"New treatment didn't work so well, then?" he asked Snape.

"No, Lupin. Some adjustments will be required."

"Pity. It tasted better than the last batch. Where am I? Muggle Hospital?"

"Mmh, in America. You Apparated, which is interesting. Can you walk?"

"Pepperup?"

Snape offered the man a chocolate from his pocket. 

"Clever," Lupin said, eating it despite the interrupted protests of Foreman and Chase. "Yes; I feel better now."

"You can't just walk out of the hospital," Cameron said. 

"I'm discharging him," House answered. 

"We don't know what's wrong! How do we know he's even a doctor!"

House gave Snape a measured look. "He's not. I told you. Crazy guy from clinic."

Snape rolled his eyes and took the stick out again, pointing it at the cluster of House's assistants. " _Stupefy! Obliviate!_ "

House watched as a dazed expression crossed all three faces with comical synchronisation. 

"How long are they going to be that way?" he asked. "Not that I mind."

"A few minutes. Lupin, _must_ you always lose your trousers? _Accio_ Lupin's wand...."

"I don't do it on purpose," Lupin complained, as a stick identical to Snape's came whizzing into the room. The magic stick turned his hospital gown into a passable imitation of Snape's clothing, in white. 

As they passed him, House offered Lupin his buisness card.

"I like a challenge," he said with a grin. Lupin grinned back. Snape sighed impatiently. "BRING YOUR STICK WITH YOU!" House called after them, scooping up the paperwork. If he shredded it, nobody would notice until it was way too late anyway. He glanced at his assistants, who were still staring dumbly at each other.

"Early dinner!" he said cheerfully to himself, and went to find Wilson.


End file.
